Friday, October 7, 2011

Letter To Secretary Smith

Dear Secretary Smith,

On behalf of the over 2,000 supporters and members of the Save BadgerCare Coalition, we would like to thank you in advance for holding public hearings on your proposed changes to BadgerCare and Medicaid as soon as possible.

We appreciated your willingness to speak at the Covering Kids and Families conference this week, where you recognized the need for at least one public hearing on the Department’s Medicaid changes. This point was also made in your letter to the Joint Finance Committee on September 30th. We agree that the hearing(s) need to be held, in an accessible location for people throughout the state, and at a time convenient for those with work and childcare commitments that prohibit them from attending hearings during the work day. Please schedule these hearings in the next couple weeks and ensure that the outreach process for these hearings is a thorough as possible. We urge you to reach-out directly to the enrollees potentially affected by these changes, to share the plan and encourage them to attend the public hearing to share their thoughts and get their questions answered.

We would also like to know when the online public comment period will end. Before this comment period ends, it is important that advocates and beneficiaries see more details on the changes, in order to respond fully. Many aspects of the proposed BadgerCare changes are ambiguous, and until questions are answered it is difficult for people to comment and propose alternatives. To that end, we would like to know when the public will be seeing a more detailed plan.

The changes you are proposing to BadgerCare and Medicaid will impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites. With stakes that high, responsibility dictates a careful and deliberate process. Families, their advocates, and health care providers look forward to the opportunities to provide input to DHS in-person and would appreciate your response to our questions regarding a timeline and further details.